Farmers hope immigration reforms sow more workers

Proposals could help ease labor shortage.

Updated 11:38 pm, Monday, April 8, 2013

Photo: Photos By Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News

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Immigrant workers Sergio Vera Jr. (left) and his father, Sergio Vera Sr., harvest onions near Carrizo Springs last week. There is a shortage of workers in the United States who will do this kind of labor.

Immigrant workers Sergio Vera Jr. (left) and his father, Sergio Vera Sr., harvest onions near Carrizo Springs last week. There is a shortage of workers in the United States who will do this kind of labor.

Photo: Photos By Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News

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A new agricultural guest worker program is said to be a key piece of immigration reform in Congress.

A new agricultural guest worker program is said to be a key piece of immigration reform in Congress.

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Immigrant worker Mario Segura shakes dirt off onions as he harvests them outside Carrizo Springs. The oil and gas drilling boom in the Eagle Ford Shale has made a shortage of laborers even worse, as farmworkers leave to take higher-paying jobs.

Immigrant worker Mario Segura shakes dirt off onions as he harvests them outside Carrizo Springs. The oil and gas drilling boom in the Eagle Ford Shale has made a shortage of laborers even worse, as farmworkers

Bruce Frasier, left, President of Dixondale Farms talks to Sergio Vera Jr, center, and his father Sergio Vera Sr., immigrant workers harvesting onion plants at Dixondale Farms just outside Carrizo Springs on Friday, April 5, 2013. Top industry leaders from agriculture to construction met with the White House over the past month asking for more flexibility in hiring foreign labor, including extending work authorization to the parents of children receiving a reprieve from deportation thanks to Obama’s signature immigration initiative known as deferred action. less

Dimmit County onion grower Bruce Frasier spends the pre-dawn hours drawing up spreadsheets balancing the day's inventories of young plants with orders from big-box retailers, commercial farms and direct-mail buyers across the country.

The variable is always labor.

“I never know how many will show up,” he said, surveying the long lines of sprouts ready for transplant Friday.

Not surprisingly, Frasier is an outspoken proponent of a new agricultural guest worker program, said to be one of the key pieces, if not sticking points, of comprehensive immigration reform being hammered out behind closed doors in Congress. He says his own operation is proof that there are farmworkers who want to come to the United States, work and go back home.

Despite his workforce concerns, Frasier considers himself one of the lucky ones.

Since he lives only an hour from the border, he can count on vans bringing workers from near a bridge linking Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico. The most adept at pulling, banding and cutting the plants will make about $80 per day and be returning by midday to homes in Mexico.

But there's no certainty about how many will show up, and there's a shortage of workers on the U.S. side.

The oil and gas drilling boom in the Eagle Ford Shale, credited with creating more than 116,000 jobs in a 20-county area in 2012, is exacerbating the labor problems. Field hands are leaving to take higher-paying jobs with energy companies, making it harder than ever for farmers in the area to find workers at harvest time.

Frasier's American workers — who can earn as much as $20 an hour — are aging, and their children aren't interested in farm work.

“In the end, my crop won't wait,” he wrote in a recent newspaper opinion piece. “If I can't find enough willing and able U.S. workers, I need a fast, legal, reliable way to hire foreign farmhands.”

Frasier said he would bring on workers who aren't citizens or green-card holders, but that would mean tapping the H-2A visa program, a temporary work program that allows farmers to bring in foreign labor. To use it, farmers need to petition the State Department and show that there aren't enough U.S. or legal immigrant workers to get the job done and that U.S. workers' wages won't be hurt.

In Frasier's opinion, the program is cumbersome and counterproductive.

“We can't do H-2A because in H-2A you're supposed to offer the American workers first,” he said. “That means my H-2A workers would be sitting there waiting to see how many of these people showed up, and then I could put them to work. And if they didn't go to work, I would have to pay them anyway.”

The program also ties workers to specific employers, rather than letting workers follow the crops. In practice, the program has been limited to large growers with staff lawyers or outside agents to handle the paperwork.

Meanwhile, the use of undocumented labor continues.

About 48 percent of farm laborers don't have legal status to work in the U.S., according to a National Agricultural Workers Survey, and just 33 percent are U.S. citizens.

Others say the percentage of undocumented farmworkers is higher. The United Farm Workers estimates 1 million of the nation's 1.6 million farmworkers are undocumented, which is 63 percent. With such numbers, sources close to negotiations in Congress say bipartisan “gang of eight” groups in both chambers know they can't ignore agriculture.

Insiders say long-awaited proposals for comprehensive immigration reform are imminent, with published reports expecting a Senate proposal within a few weeks.

Proposals on the table include an expedited path to legal status for undocumented workers and a guest worker program to replace the H-2A visa program.

The negotiations have been secretive. Reps. John Carter, R-Round Rock, and Sam Johnson, R-Plano, are involved in the talks in the House, but both declined comment.

Meanwhile, groups representing growers and laborers are hungry for details of the emerging legislation, such as the pay levels for guest workers and whether the measure will cap how many guest workers can come.

“We are involved in our own discussion focusing on what agriculture needs and what works for our unique industry,” said Kristi Boswell of the American Farm Bureau Federation, which has taken part in the negotiations. “That has to include ways to keep our experienced agriculture workers. Whether that's a pathway to citizenship or some other form of legal status, from agriculture's perspective, that's a political question that will be addressed at a higher level.”

She said a “more streamlined, more flexible” guest worker program to replace H-2A was a big part of the discussion. But the UFW, the lead organization representing farmworkers in the talks, says the push is really to make sure farmers have a source of cheap labor.

“An agreement has been difficult to get to because many grower associations have tried to erode any progress farmworkers have made,” UFW spokeswoman Maria Machuca said. “It would be a grievous mistake to allow agribusiness to use the debate over immigration reform to further reduce wages of the poorest workers in the country."

Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples, a Republican, said he feared citizenship talks were getting in the way of the underlying labor issue.

“The lack of labor is part of every discussion I have with our agricultural producers today,” he said. “It's very real, and I believe they share my sentiment that Americans should have the first opportunity to get in line for a job. But the lines aren't forming.”

“The whole debate on citizenship seems to be hijacking the process,” he added.

Like others, Staples questioned whether there weren't merits to the “bracero” program, a program that brought in Mexican workers to pick crops until 1964.

Labor groups say the program dragged down wages for farmworkers, the same thing they foresee happening with any revised guest worker program.

While there were abuses in the program, including poor working conditions and discrimination, Staples said it allowed laborers to come to work and return home with relative ease.

“We need to go after the drug cartels with bullets and badges and use pencil and paper to manage the workforce of America,” he said. “You can enhance border security so much quicker, so much faster, so much more efficiently, if you're not chasing people looking for jobs.”